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OptumHealth

Dr. Gregory Bayer on Adding Brain to Behavioral Healthcare

June 4, 2012 by SharpBrains

Dr. Bay­er will dis­cuss Adding Brain to Behav­ioral Health­care, as part of the ses­sion Where will neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-based inter­ven­tions be accessed, and how will they be reg­u­lated and paid for? at the upcom­ing 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (June 7–14th, 2012).

Gre­go­ry Bay­er, new CEO of Brain Resource’s US oper­a­tions, served most recent­ly as the Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solu­tions, a divi­sion of Unit­ed­Health Group [Read more…] about Dr. Gre­go­ry Bay­er on Adding Brain to Behav­ioral Healthcare

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: behavioral, behavioral healthcare, Brain-Resource, Gergory Bayer, healthcare, medgadget, neuroplasticity, OptumHealth, UnitedHealth-Group

5 Quotes on Neuroplasticity-Based Healthcare and Innovation for an Aging Society

April 8, 2010 by Alvaro Fernandez

marian_diamondMar­i­an Dia­mond, UC-Berke­ley: “Peo­ple fre­quent­ly do the same lev­el of cross­word puz­zles to stim­u­late their brains year after year. They do not chal­lenge their brains with more dif­fi­cult lev­els of puz­zles. In our research, we showed that if we chal­lenged the rats to reach their food cups by hav­ing to climb over many obstruc­tions, their brains increased more than those of rats who could walk unhin­dered to their food cups. Chal­lenge increased brain size.”

tom_pic.thumbnailTom War­den, All­state: “… we see the oppor­tu­ni­ty that cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­vides as just the next evo­lu­tion of things that we can advo­cate and get behind that ulti­mate­ly make for a bet­ter dri­ving expe­ri­ence, a safer dri­ving expe­ri­ence for peo­ple. Not only for our insureds, but to help the roads be safer for everyone…what we did is to attempt to repli­cate the results that were observed in the lab­o­ra­to­ry envi­ron­ment where old­er dri­vers who have com­plet­ed a good amount of train­ing, 10 hours or more of train­ing, had shown that the risk of crash could be reduced by up to about 50%.”

whitehouse_large-150x150David White­house, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solu­tions: “Man­aged care has not always been on the fore­front of inno­va­tion and it has been, for us, a chal­lenge and an excite­ment to think about how best to incor­po­rate the lat­est find­ings in neu­ro­science. If I was to give you the major areas that we think are impor­tant, one is the impor­tance of neu­ro­science capa­bilit­ties to improve triage, the sec­ond is the impor­tance that this has on increas­ing access to much bet­ter func­tion­al assess­ments and its rela­tion­ship to safe­ty. The third is in the area of clin­i­cal deci­sion sup­port and the fourth is in brain health. First and fore­most, why is it that in every oth­er organ we have objec­tive data of the organ itself doing its work under var­i­ous loads to help us when we need to make deci­sions about its health and dis­ease state and how best to sup­port it and intervene.”

meet_bill_DrWilliamEReichman_-150x150William Reich­man, Bay­crest: “…we must do for brain health in the 21st cen­tu­ry what we large­ly accom­plished in car­dio­vas­cu­lar health in the past century…that includes an increased focus not only on ter­tiary pre­ven­tion, but on pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary prevention…approximately a year and a half ago the Ontario gov­ern­ment made a deci­sion to invest $10 mil­lion in Canada’s first cen­tre for brain fit­ness to be housed at Bay­crest at the Rot­man Research Institute.…Here in Cana­da I think that we’ve been able to make a com­pelling case main­tain­ing good brain fit­ness needs to be a nation­al pri­or­i­ty for this coun­try and we have been engaged in dis­cus­sions with the gov­ern­ment, both fed­er­al­ly and provin­cial­ly, that brain health pro­grams real­ly need to begin in childhood.”

murali-150x150P Murali Doraiswamy, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty: “… you don’t want to walk into a gro­cery store or into a gas sta­tion and see a brain game claim­ing that they’re a neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty brain game or a bot­tle of water that’s claim­ing it’s a cog­ni­tive reserve enhancer because then I think you’re going to destroy the whole field key…So I think it’s essen­tial for acad­e­mia, for indus­try, for think tanks, for even the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment agen­cies such as per­haps Eng­land, US, Cana­da, to come togeth­er and form a set of guide­lines that can real­ly guide the prop­er devel­op­ment of a lot of these prod­ucts and by prod­ucts I’m talk­ing about two types of prod­ucts. One is cog­ni­tive screen­ing instru­ments and the sec­ond is inter­ven­tion prod­ucts to either improve sort of nor­mal func­tion­ing or to increase resilience to stress or three, to pre­vent disease.”

(answer­ing to audi­ence ques­tion, “when do you believe that cog­ni­tive screen­ing may become a pret­ty rou­tine part of stan­dard med­ical care”) “I think it’s long overdue…the brain is the most impor­tant organ.”

—

In Jan­u­ary of 2010 Sharp­Brains pro­duced the inau­gur­al vir­tu­al, glob­al Sharp­Brains Sum­mit on Tech­nol­o­gy for Cog­ni­tive Health and Per­for­mance (Jan­u­ary 18–20th, 2010). The Sum­mit fea­tured a dream team of over 40 speak­ers who are lead­ers in indus­try and research to dis­cuss emerg­ing research, tools and best prac­tices for cog­ni­tive health and per­for­mance, and gath­ered over 250 par­tic­i­pants in 16 countries.

Are you inter­est­ed in what over 40 lead­ing sci­en­tists, clin­i­cians, exec­u­tives and tech­nol­o­gists have to say about the lat­est Tech­nol­o­gy for Cog­ni­tive Health and Per­for­mance? Want to hear how they respond­ed to more than 200 audi­ence ques­tions? You can Learn more Here (full tran­scripts are now avail­able). Sharp­Brains read­ers can get a 15% dis­count [Read more…] about 5 Quotes on Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty-Based Health­care and Inno­va­tion for an Aging Society

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Allstate, Baycrest, Berkeley, direct neuroplasticity, Duke, harness neuroplasticity, health, healthcare, innovation, managed care, neuroplasticity, OptumHealth, quotes, quotes neuroplasticity

United BioSource Corporation Announces Acquisition of Cognitive Drug Research (computerized cognitive testing)

September 14, 2009 by Alvaro Fernandez

Press release: “Leader in cog­ni­tion mea­sure­ment inte­grates into UBC to max­i­mize mea­sure­ment pre­ci­sion of piv­otal end­points and ensure data integri­ty. Unit­ed BioSource Cor­po­ra­tion (UBC) today announced the acqui­si­tion of CDR”

Press release (09/10/09): Here

Analy­sis for mem­bers of Sharp­Brains Net­work for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion: Here

For con­text, see our pre­vi­ous arti­cle titled Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments: oppor­tu­ni­ties and con­cerns, focused on the OptumHealth — Brain­Re­source part­ner­ship and inno­v­a­tive work by the US Army.

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: brain-fitness-innovation, Brain-Resource, CDR, cognition, cognition-measurement, cognitive-assessments, Cognitive-Drug-Research, computerized-cognitive-testing, OptumHealth, UBC, United-BioSource, United-BioSource-Corporation, US-Army

Update: Preparing Society for the Cognitive Age, and Industry Webinar

August 13, 2009 by Alvaro Fernandez

Here you have the August edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and Brain Fitnessbrain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page.

Sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tion Fron­tiers in Neu­ro­science recent­ly pub­lished a spe­cial issue on Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion, and invit­ed me to con­tribute with an arti­cle titled Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age. Ground­break­ing brain research has occurred over the last 20 years. The oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve brain health and per­for­mance is immense, but we need to ensure the mar­ket­place matures in a ratio­nal and sus­tain­able man­ner, both through health­care and non-health­care chan­nels. Click Here to read my article.

Announce­ments

In May 2009 Sharp­Brains pub­lished The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009, the main indus­try report for lead­ing orga­ni­za­tions prepar­ing their mem­bers, their clients, and their patients for the cog­ni­tive age. 150-pages long, the report includes a mar­ket sur­vey with 2,000+ respon­dents, detailed analy­sis of 20+ ven­dors, research briefs writ­ten by 12 lead­ing sci­en­tists and data and trends for 4 major cus­tomer segments.webinar

Below we share the full Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry of the report and announce an exclu­sive webi­nar on Sep­tem­ber 29th to dis­cuss the State of the Mar­ket in more depth with buy­ers of the report.

To order the report and access both the report and the webi­nar, you can click Here. (Only $975 ‑a 25% dis­count- using Dis­count Code Frontiers2009 before Sep­tem­ber 28th).

State of the Market

The brain fit­ness field holds excit­ing promise for the future while pre­sent­ing clear oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges today. The good news is that there are more tools avail­able than ever before to assess and train a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive skills. The bad news is that there are no mag­ic pills and that con­sumers, while sat­is­fied over­all, seem con­fused by com­pet­ing claims on how to reduce one’s “brain age.” We do see signs that this ear­ly-stage mar­ket can mature in a more ratio­nal, struc­tured man­ner; but there is much work to be done. We esti­mate that the size of the U.S. brain fit­ness soft­ware (i.e., appli­ca­tions designed to assess or enhance cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties) mar­ket in 2008 was [Read more…] about Update: Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age, and Indus­try Webinar

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Advanced-Brain-Technologies, Allstate, Applied-Cognitive-Engineering, brain-age, Brain-Center-America, brain-fitness-market, brain-fitness-training, Brain-Resource, brain-training-market, CNS-Vital-Signs, cogmed, cognifit, cognitive, cognitive-abilities, Cognitive-Age, Cognitive-Drug-Research, cognitive-reserve, cognitive-screenings, CogState, Dakim, Houghton-Mifflin, innovation, Learning-Enhancement-Corporation, lumos-labs, nintendo, NovaVision, OptumHealth, Posit-Science, readmissions, scientific-brain-training, Scientific-Learning, software, TransAnalytics, US-Army, USA-Hockey-League, videogames, Vigorous-Mind, Vivity-Labs

Brain Teasers on Brain Training/ Games for Health Conference

June 16, 2009 by Alvaro Fernandez

Giv­en the whole dis­tract­ing “con­tro­ver­sy” of whether Nin­ten­do Brain Age “works” or not, I have start­ed to use the fol­low­ing “brain teasers” in my talks in order to help the audi­ence gain a more use­ful per­spec­tive of what is going on. They worked great both in the Medicare Read­mis­sions Sum­mit in DC a few weeks ago, and at the Games for Heath Con­fer­ence last week.

Q: How many sol­diers in the US Army have gone through com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive test­ing before being deployed, and why?
A: Over 150,000, in order to estab­lish an objec­tive start­ing base­line and iden­ti­fy poten­tial Post Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD) and Trau­mat­ic Brain Injury (TBI) prob­lems upon their return.

Q: How big is the ongo­ing invest­ment by OptumHealth, a divi­sion of Unit­ed­Health Group (UNH), in devel­op­ing com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive assess­ments to inform clin­i­cal decision-making?
A: over $6m.

Q: How many All­state pol­i­cy-hold­ers over the age of 50 have received a com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram to improve their dri­ving safety?
A: Over 8,000, in the state of Pennsylvania.

Q: How many res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties are offer­ing com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams to their residents?
A: Over 700, in the US alone, cov­er­ing inde­pen­dent and assist­ed living.

Q: How much mon­ey has the Gov­ern­ment of Ontario invest­ed in set­ting up a new Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness as part of Bay­crest research cen­ter in order to devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize tech­nolo­gies to assess and enhance cog­ni­tive functions?
A: $10m, matched with anoth­er 10m from local investors.

For more on our Cog­ni­tive Health Track at Games for Health Con­fer­ence last week, see this USA Today article:

More doc­tor’s pre­scrip­tions may include brain games to improve men­tal acuity

(pret­ty good over­all, but please note that Sharp­Brains did­n’t orga­nize the whole con­fer­ence, “only” the cog­ni­tive health track, which was a lot of stim­u­lat­ing fun. Ben Sawyer and team did over­all conference).

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Allstate, Brain Teasers, brain-age, Centre-for-Brain-Fitness, cognitive-health, Cognitive-Training, computerized-cognitive-assessments, driving-safetycognitive-testing, enhance-cognitive-functions, Games-for-Health, Government-of-Ontario, improve-mental-acuity, nintendo, Nintendo-Brain-Age, OptumHealth, PTSD, residential-communities, TBI, UNH, UnitedHealth-Group, US-Army

Corporate Wellness Programs start to include Brain Health

May 30, 2009 by Alvaro Fernandez

Brain-fit­ness games join work­place, as well as senior cen­ter, arse­nals (Mar­ket­Watch)

- “Con­sumers and retire­ment homes have made brain-fit­ness games and exer­cis­es a com­mer­cial hit, but now some insur­ers and employ­ers are incor­po­rat­ing them into well­ness pro­grams that pro­mote health not just for the body but also for the mind.”

- “Improv­ing brain health can result in less pre­sen­teeism, the ten­den­cy to be at work but be dis­tract­ed and not able to focus,” he added. “If you look at dis­abil­i­ty costs, absen­teeism and pre­sen­teeism account for most of the med­ical costs, and that’s a good rea­son for employ­ers to be focused on brain health.” (accord­ing to Dr. Eugene Bak­er, vice pres­i­dent at OptumHealth’s Behav­ioral Solu­tions division)”

The arti­cle reviews inno­v­a­tive prac­tices at OptumHealth, Nation­wide Auto Insur­ance Com­pa­ny, Humana, Penn Treaty Amer­i­can Corp, All­state, and the US Army. I am glad to see the media start to notice the impor­tance of cog­ni­tive assess­ments and the grow­ing activ­i­ty by insur­ers. [Read more…] about Cor­po­rate Well­ness Pro­grams start to include Brain Health

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Allstate, brain, brain-fitness-games, Brain-games, Brain-health, cognitive, cognitive-assessments, cognitive-decline, corporate-wellness, Humana, memory-fitness, memory-fitness-products, mental-fitness, Nationwide-Auto-Insurance-Company, OptumHealth, Penn-Treaty-American-Corp, Stanford, supplements, US-Army

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